The issue facing Sir Chris Hoy and the managers of the British track team over the next nine months is simple: how do you replicate perfection? In winning three gold medals in the Beijing Olympic Games – in the sprint, keirin and team sprint – Hoy could have done no better; in taking seven on the track, the cyclists could barely have done more. In London next August Hoy will have the chance to do the same but it is a huge task to contemplate. He is philosophical about it, which seems surprising until you figure out this is probably the only way you can be in the face of a challenge of this magnitude.

"I could repeat it, but it's an unlikely thing to achieve. It would be amazing if I could do it again. The way I'm looking at it at this stage is that London is an opportunity to win a gold medal in front of my home crowd, to win two would be better, to win three would be better still. I don't feel as if … Certain riders in the team talk about the Games as if it's this huge pressure, a horrendous thing to worry about, I can see why you might think that, but for me it's a chance to do something I've not done before. If I do everything I can and don't make it, I can accept the result."

So how do you go about tackling it? You go back to the basic British cycling principle: process rather than outcome. You don't think about the bigger picture, but focus on getting the details right. That principle is what pervades the conversation with Hoy during the break between rounds in the national keirin championship, as he munches on a frugal lunch – sandwich, malt loaf, protein shake – in the gym in the Manchester velodrome.

"I started thinking beyond London this summer and realised there is no point thinking that far ahead. I don't know what the next 10 months is going to bring. It's not about the big picture, it's about saying you will hit every day the best you can within what you can control." Hoy makes no bones about the fact that since the Olympic countdown started for real, after March's world championships in Holland, he has gone up another gear.

"I've compromised a bit the last couple of years, there were things I chose to do, certain events, communication things, media, charity things. You have to have a balance in your life and if I put the foot to the floor for four years the chances of being able to keep it going to London would be slimmer. But I've kept at a level where I've been in touch with the best guys in the world, still had some good performances," – of the opposition, he accepts merely that the Frenchman Gregory Baugé has moved on in the past couple of years – "but now we are within striking distance of the Games I'm not holding anything back."

That means setting personal bests in the gym, which Hoy has been "hitting hard, which I didn't the last two years for fear of injury. You still lift heavy, but not pushing it." This year, he has lifted more than before Beijing – "It doesn't make you fast but it increases your potential" – and there are other items such as "nasty lactic intervals". "You look at every area, there's no reason not to be 100%. I've had a good five months."

He ponders, for a moment, when he may have a drink this side of London. "I've not had a glass of wine or beer for quite a while. I'll have a bottle of wine after the Kazakhstan World Cup [in early November], that'll be the first for ages, then it's New Year, then hopefully a celebration after the world championships in Melbourne. That's three bottles between now and the Olympic Games. It's not like I'm craving alcohol, but the need to relax, let your hair down, do something different.

"You think: 'What difference will a bottle of wine make?', but it's not about the Games, it's about next week's training. I will race the best I can and if I don't win I'll shake the other guy's hand, he's a better man than me. But I don't want to not win and start thinking: 'I did that appearance, the week after the training wasn't great, it had a knock-on effect to the week after,' or: 'I went out for two beers and had six because a mate was back in town.'

"That doesn't affect London directly, but the whole process. If you look at a good season you can find a certain point when it kicks off, a good week in a month away, it becomes three weeks, then four. The whole thing is about morale, momentum, and it can go the opposite way. You have a bad session, you feel a bit crap, and go downhill."

The point that has to be made here is that, although Hoy races relatively rarely compared with a road cyclist such as Mark Cavendish, every training session is competitive: times have to be matched or beaten, team-mates monitored, certain weights surpassed. He is, he says, "racing every day", with a constant succession of targets.

There is a glorious emotional twist in what Hoy is trying to achieve in the next nine months. It is more than 15 years since the Scot and the Lancastrian Jason Queally first teamed up for a major international championship in the team sprint, but on Friday the partnership is set to be reforged in Holland. It was 1996 when Queally dislodged a foot from his pedal in his starting effort alongside Hoy at the world championships, in the hoary days before lottery funding transformed the Great Britain team; both men will be hoping for better fortunes in the European championships in Apeldoorn, the Netherlands, this weekend.

"To think of him coming back in and potentially being part of a team that has the potential to win a gold medal is incredible," Hoy says. "I remember when Jason stepped up to get his gold in 2000, thinking that he could retire now: 'It doesn't matter what he does, he will always be an Olympic gold medallist.' It was what set the whole cycling programme rolling. It set us on our way for the next 10 years."

At 41, Queally is six years older than Hoy, who says, having once contemplated retiring in his early 30s, he may – just may – follow his example and continue at the highest level as his 40s approach. "There's no reason why I shouldn't go on as long. Illness and injury can conspire against you the older you get, but as long as you are healthy and have motivation ... It will depend on whether there are other things I want to do in my life after London and Glasgow. You can't plan too far ahead. At my age you don't even buy green bananas."